A look back at how Bill Lazor game-planned for Packers as Dolphins OC

The Cincinnati Bengals have a new offensive coordinator going into Week 3 in Bill Lazor.

As the play caller for the Miami Dolphins in 2014, Lazor coached against the Green Bay Packers in a 27-24 loss in Week 5. He had 10 days to prepare. Let’s take a look at how he attacked the Packers defense and how he might do something similar for the Bengals.

Since this team drafted John Ross and Joe Mixon, I’ve expected this offense to spread it out more, keep the pace up and create space for their athletes to work. We didn’t get that, and the offense has struggled to move the ball.

With the Dolphins, Lazor really liked to spread the offense and defense out, throw the ball quickly, get favorable matchups and go up-tempo. I took notes while watching his offense against the Packers, and they only put quarterback Ryan Tannehill under center five times and kept him in shotgun on 51 other snaps. That’s what we’d like to see in Cincinnati to help Andy Dalton, Giovani Bernard and Mixon.

On the Dolphins’ first third down, they called for an empty backfield and split out the running back and tight end. They also stacked their three receivers on the right side to help them get open.

The next drive, Miami went into hurry-up and moved the ball deep into Packers territory before failing to convert on a fourth-and-goal run. That drive saw plenty of screens, motion and inside zone runs — all things we should see in Cincinnati.

The next play I’d like to show you is from the Dolphins’ two-minute drill. Again, we see presnap motion to assist a receiver in getting open as Jarvis Landry runs an angle route to beat zone coverage.

But it’s more than Landry’s motion and route, it’s the route combo with tight end Charles Clay.

Because Clay runs his drag route in front of the inside linebacker, it draws his attention and holds the defender inside. Meanwhile, Landry’s route starts toward the sideline, forcing the defensive back to stretch his zone toward the boundary also. At this time, Landry angles his route back inside, and Tannehill hits him in the window, which is now wider.

The next formation should be very familiar to Bengals fans because Jay Gruden and Hue Jackson used it often.

It’s the “Emory and Henry” formation, the one where both offensive tackles are split out. This look helps create confusion for the defense (see picture above) and also creates an opportunity for the quarterback to choose the best play out of three. Based on where the defense lines up, the quarterback can throw a screen to the top or bottom of the formation or hand the ball off to the back; this also includes a read-option for the quarterback.

On this snap, the Packers defense has three defenders to the left and only two to the right. Tannehill spots this and throws a quick screen to a receiver on the right.

Lastly, how did Lazor help the running game? He forced defenders to play the quarterback and chase a receiver on this next play. This helped get defenders out of the box.

Lazor stays in the shotgun to run in goal-line situations (crazy, right?!). The Dolphins bring a receiver in motion pre-snap and the Packers’ defensive back follows him in motion.

After the snap, Tannehill gives a read-option look and that forces the edge defender to stay home instead of chasing down Lamar Miller. The motioning receiver draws the attention of two Packers defenders and leaves another in no-man’s-land. All of this leaves six defenders in the box against six Dolphins blockers. That’s a huge advantage in the red zone, where everything should get tighter. Instead, Miller runs in for the touchdown almost untouched. I really like what this means for Bernard and Mixon.

My only gripe with Lazor’s play calling from this game was in the final four minutes as Miami had the lead at 24-20. He called only three runs to four passes. Miami failed to drain the clock and punted with 2:14 left, and Aaron Rodgers made them pay for it. Green Bay won on a touchdown pass with three seconds left in the game.

To be honest, that aggressiveness doesn’t sound so bad right now. Actually, all of this sounds good. The Bengals should spread the offense out and run out of shotgun more often. This is how their best players play their best. I don’t know how long it’ll take to install an offense like this, but Lazor has the playbook to help the Bengals offense get back on track.

Like this article?

Sign up for the Bengals Wire email newsletter to get our top stories in your inbox every morning

Success

Thanks for signing up.
You'll be waking up a little more awesome tomorrow.